Marquette Warrior

We are here to provide an independent, rather skeptical view of events at Marquette University. Comments are enabled on most posts, but extended comments are welcome and can be e-mailed to jmcadams2@juno.com. E-mailed comments will be treated like Letters to the Editor.
This site has no official connection with Marquette University. Indeed, when University officials find out about it, they will doubtless want it shut down.

Friday, July 22, 2016

Marian Grotto at Marquette University?

St. Ignatius of Loyola was intensely devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was the impetus of his conversion, his lifelong devotion to Christ and his founding of the Society of Jesus. He was often referred to as a “Soldier of Mary” and “The Holy Knight of Mary.”

Ignatius knew intimately the incomparable power of the Blessed Mother for captivating souls, protecting them from evil and leading them to Jesus Christ, her Divine Son. For this reason, he consecrated himself and his religious order to “Mary, Queen of the Society of Jesus.”

Marquette University is a Jesuit university entrusted with the formation of the minds and hearts of young men and women. Imparting this most fundamental component of Ignatian Catholic spirituality – Marian devotion – is critical to its mission. The Louis Joliet Society proposes that Marquette do so through the creation of a Marian Grotto on campus as do other Catholic universities (above photo - the Beaudry Shrine at John Carroll University), honoring Our Lady with beautiful spaces dedicated to her likeness where students can pray for her motherly protection, comfort and intercession.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Secular Activists Trying to Suppress Christian Schools

During the past few years, responding to ever-more draconian codes on secular campuses aimed at constraining free speech, dissenting voices have been raised here and there across the political spectrum, defending free expression and free association for all. This addition of conscientious objection outside conservative and religious ranks is a welcome development. It also brings us to one other large threat to free speech in education these days—one that’s still in the closet.

Secularist progressivism claims to champion diversity, but its activists today do not tolerate genuine diversity, including and es­pecially in the realm of ideas, as revealed by today’s legal and other attacks on Christian colleges, Christian associations and clubs, Christian schools, Christian students, and Christian homeschooling.

These are bellwether ideological campaigns that have yet to gar­ner the attention they deserve outside religious circles. Their logical conclusion is to interfere with and shut down Christian education itself—from elementary school on up to religious colleges and uni­versities.

It’s Not An Education If It Includes Christian Ideas?

Consider a few particulars. The Christian college club Intervarsity has had its credentials questioned on secular campuses around the country. So have other student groups including Chi Alpha and the Christian Legal Society, the focus of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010), which found that Hastings College had not violated the First Amendment in forcing the CLS to accept members who violated its Christian moral code. During the past ten years, two high-profile Christian colleges—The King’s College in New York, and Gordon College in Massachusetts—have been subjected to accreditation battles. Meanwhile, home-schooling remains an object of attack by leftish pundits, New Atheists, the National Education Association, and other progressive standard-bearers.

Still other authorities want to discredit religious higher education altogether. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014, a professor at the Uni­versity of Pennsylvania called accreditation for any Christian col­lege a “scandal,” adding that “[p]roviding accreditation to colleges like [evangelical Protestant] Wheaton [College] makes a mockery of whatever academic and intellectual standards the process of ac­creditation is supposed to uphold.” Trinity Western University in Canada has likewise been embroiled for years in a battle to keep its accreditation—because its community members pledge not to have sex outside traditional marriage.

Let’s ask the obvious question: exactly whose schools are being at­tacked as unworthy, substandard, and undeserving of recognition? Christians’ schools, that’s whose—not progressive flagships like Bennington, Middlebury, or Sarah Lawrence. If religious tradi­tionalists were fanning out to campaign against schools dominated by other canons, cacophony would resound from Cupertino to Ban­gor. But because the prejudice propelling these attacks has Christi­anity in its sights, no one outside religious circles objects.

These efforts to impede religious education are also part of an ongoing paradox. It is not Christian colleges that have made a habit of ha­rassing and intimidating speakers who represent different points of view; it is nonreligious campuses. When socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders gave a speech in September 2015 at Liberty University, media accounts, including in The New York Times, took note of how courteous and polite the student body was, and how they unfailingly applauded a speaker who acknowledged at the outset profoundly disagreeing with their views.

Contrast their civility with the hostile reception certain other thinkers are guaranteed these days, just by setting foot on secular campuses. Followers of the Cross, especially, are often greeted by an especially bilious class of protester. Thus, for example, University of Tulsa students protested a former self-professed lesbian turned Christian—on the grounds that calling something “sinful” is “thinly veiled hate speech,” as one leader of the protest explained.

Simi­larly, when Jennifer Roback Morse—a former Ivy League professor and head of the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to traditional Christian teaching—appeared at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 20 students interrupted her talk with chants, waving signs inscribed with various obscenities. When Christian speaker Ravi Zacharias spoke at the University of Pennsylvania, a local athe­ist group handed out bingo-style cards mocking the speaker to every student who entered the hall. The list could go on.

At Marquette

One might believe that Marquette, a “Catholic” university, would at least be tolerant of Christian teachings about sexuality.

But to believe that, one would have to believe Marquette is really a Catholic university.

At Marquette, the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship was threatened with being kicked off campus for canning an officer who was engaged in a homosexual affair. He made it clear he did not accept Christian teaching about homosexuality, and would continue the affair. Under pressure from alumni, Marquette relented.

All of this, of course, represents the glaring hypocrisy of the Orwellian phrase “diversity and inclusion.” “Diversity” is interpreted to exclude a large body of ideas, including the ideas that Christians have about sexuality and the ideas that all civilizations have had about marriage until very recently. “Inclusion” means intolerant and exclusionary conduct toward Christians and others who hold to these ideas.

Restoring Campus Free Speech: The Impossible Dream?

“Safety,” as it happens, is a magic word on campus. It has its own special meaning, well beyond legitimate concerns about robbery, sexual assaults, and coercive threats. Some students have stretched the term to mean “I feel unsafe because I disagree with your ideas. So shut up. Right now.”

In this Bizarro World, you can feel unsafe if someone says fracking is a good idea, or that the Constitution protects gun purchases, or offer the opinion that employers should not have to provide free birth control. Crying “unsafe” is the campus equivalent of pulling the fire alarm—but with no sense of what a fire really is and no penalty for false alarms.

Okay, you say, it’s a free country and anybody can voice a complaint, justified or not. Surely, university administrators who receive silly complaints will gently explain that classrooms are supposed to challenge students, supposed to elicit spirited, informed debate, and occasionally prompt students to rethink their views and offer better reasons for them.

If you need to see a psychological counselor, we have them available. If you face any real dangers, tell us immediately, and we will help. Otherwise, do the assignment, develop your own views, buttress them with logic and evidence, and prepare to deal with alternative perspectives.

Oh, you naïve denizen of Earth.

Few administrators would even consider saying that. Today, dean-of-students offices are devoted to comforting delicate snowflakes and soothing their feelings. If that means stamping out others’ speech, too bad.

The deans are typically helped by small bureaucracies with Orwellian titles such as “the Office for Diversity and Inclusion.” The title is deceptive; these offices are ideologically driven. They are not about “including” Chinese-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Jews who support Israel, or evangelical Christians who may feel themselves beleaguered minorities on campus. The diversity police have zero interest in encouraging diverse viewpoints. Instead, they are university-sponsored advocates for approved minorities, approved viewpoints, and approved grievances. Full stop.

The rot has even spread to schools such as the University of Chicago, which has exemplary principles of free speech. Where Chicago slips—where many schools slip—is translating its worthy principles into practice. This year, for example, Palestinian activists disrupted two pro-Israel events on campus, with no consequences.

That’s standard fare across the country. An administrator, charged with protecting students, actually stopped both events after order had been restored. She simply announced the events were over, even though the student sponsors wanted them to continue. Instead of protecting free speech, she squashed it.

She was not alone. A couple of years ago, her colleagues twice admonished students for advertising ordinary debate topics, one on affirmative action, another on illegal immigration. A student had complained that black students were harmed by even discussing affirmative action. Another said Hispanics were injured simply by seeing the phrase “illegal immigration.”

University administrators duly summoned the debate leaders for “sensitivity discussions.” Remember, this is a debate society, these are prominent public issues, and this is a university, a place where ideas should be contested. No matter. After I complained to senior administrators, they actually defended the sensitivity grilling.

Just for fun, imagine a conservative student complaining about a debate titled “Resolved: We should encourage more undocumented immigration.” Is it remotely possible that administrators would summon the debate sponsors and tell them to be more sensitive to students who think illegal immigration is, well, illegal?

Not a chance. Some administrators told me so directly. That means the whole process is not only ludicrous, it is deeply biased against some viewpoints. That’s what “inclusion and diversity” means in practice, not just at Chicago or Northern Colorado but at universities across the country.

What should the administrators have done? They should have told the complaining student, “I’m sorry you are upset, but alternative views, sometimes disturbing ones, are central to your education and a liberal society. We are absolutely committed to protecting you from physical dangers and imminent threats, but not from ideas you don’t like. Here’s the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s not long. Take 20 seconds and read it. Then, go to the library, read the assigned materials, formulate your arguments, and engage with other students. Who knows? You might learn something.”

That didn’t happen at Northern Colorado. Instead, the complaint went straight to the university’s “Bias Response Team,” and they snapped into action. The teachers, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, were told not to discuss transgender issues again and to avoid stating anyone’s opinions about them, lest it trouble the complaining student.

This was just one of 44 incidents their Bias Response Team handled last year. It is unclear if they want to purchase land in rural China for a much-needed Re-Education Through Labor Camp.

This assault on free discussion is now commonplace on campus. What can be done?

Lipson then offers his remedies:

First, university presidents and top administrators must show some intellectual courage. Their boards of trustees should demand to know if free speech is protected on their campuses, in principle and in practice. Then, they should hold the school administrators accountable for results.

Second, universities should tell students, beginning with their acceptance letters, that “our school believes in free speech, open debate, and diverse opinions. You will hear different views on controversial topics. You are urged to read, write, and develop your own views, but you may not suppress others.” Stress that core value during orientation week. Urge students who seek shelter from intellectual challenges to go somewhere else.

Third, assign one ranking administrator primary responsibility for ensuring free and open debate on campus. This administrator should have no other responsibilities for student affairs since, experience shows, those other student responsibilities undermine the focus on free speech. He or she should make regular reports to the university president, faculty, and board, just as others do about gender discrimination, physical safety, and other issues.

Fourth, demand that student affairs offices stop suppressing basic academic freedoms and start supporting them. Begin by restoring the rightful meaning of “student safety.” It shouldn’t be distorted to shield students from uncomfortable ideas. In the 1950s, that would have prevented students at Ole Miss from urging racial integration, or even hearing about it in class. Somebody would have been offended.

Finally, let students know that they have every right to protest peacefully. They have every right to hold their own events, opposing what others’ advocate. But they have no right to disrupt others, and they will be punished if they do. Stop coddling rabble-rousers who come to campus specifically to disrupt academic events, as they often do. Universities routinely ignore these problems, despite their corrosive effects.

The problems with Lipson’s prescriptions should be obvious: if colleges were willing to do any of that, they would already have done it.

The same thing applies to “intellectual courage” on the part of top administrators, or oversight by boards of trustees. Are the former all of a sudden going to grow a backbone? Are the latter all of a sudden going to start making “trouble” and disrupt the cozy, clubby ambiance of such boards?

And the idea that any university administration would appoint a bureaucrat whose job was, in effect, to make trouble for all the other bureaucrats who prefer that speech be suppressed is utopian. If any administrator had that official job description, we can be sure he or she would be a toothless tiger.

Get Government Involved

The one hope for imposing some tolerance of speech on colleges rests with the Federal government (or perhaps state governments). The Obama Justice and Education departments have been active in bullying colleges to restrict free speech by defining “harassment” so broadly as to cover any statements politically correct types don’t like. It has also bullied schools to restrict the due process rights of males accused of sexual assault.

Justice and Education departments run by conservatives (or those few remaining liberals who believe in free speech) could apply pressure from the opposite direction.

For public universities, the justification is straightforward. Free speech in those places is protected by the First Amendment. In practice, that doesn’t help much, as most students aren’t willing to go to court to vindicate their rights. But Federal regulators could impose punishments (including withdrawal of Federal subsidies) to protect student (and faculty) rights. Whether this would require a change in a statute is a question lawyers have to answer.

The situation with private schools is a bit more complicated, since private colleges have, in fact, a right to restrict speech. Institutions such as Brigham Young and Wheaton College explicitly do that.

Private colleges do not, however, have a right to advertise that they respect free speech, and claim to respect free speech in official documents, and then abridge free speech. Allowing students to complain to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education when their promised free speech is abridged would be a good idea. Private institutions can have their Federal subsidies withheld.

Can This Happen?

Can any of this happen? At the national level, getting government involved to protect speech on campus would require a Republican president, and one who is willing to put people committed to speech in key places in the Education and Justice departments. That Republican president would have to be willing to expend some political capital on the enterprise. And Republicans in the House and Senate would have to be willing to expend political capital.

The odds of this happening are essentially nil.

But what about state governments? That is more likely. We have just seen Scott Walker and Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature challenge and defeat the University of Wisconsin on the budget.

Where are the state legislatures (perhaps in the more conservative states) willing to do the same over speech?